The Battle of Chickamauga

Game Review

Review by James Baker


Programmes by Worlds to Conquer
GDW
Released: 1985
Price: $35
Complexity: Experienced
Solitaire Suitability: Excellent
***

The Battle of Chickamauga is a brigade level simulation of one of the most hard-fought battles of the Civil War. It is programmed for the ATARI computer with 48K of memory and a disk. It can be played either solitaire or against a human opponent. This review is based on my experiences playing solitaire against the computer.

Although the authors of this game have created a workable simulation which is historically accurate and contains no major programming problems, I just did not find the game fun to play. Even though the game takes into account all the major factors that affect a Civil War battle, the interface between the player and computer is tedious, and the game does not flow very well.

With the exception of the powerful Union Mounted Infantry Regiments, each unit in Chickamauga represents a brigade level formation of infantry or cavalry with attached artillery. Combat units are rated by men, guns, morale, fatigue, and casualties.

The mapsheet is a 28 X 32 inch hex grid with four basic terrain types (field, ridge, woods, and hills), with rivers, roads, and trails also represented. The mapsheet can be displayed both at a strategic level (where the whole map is displayed with less detail) and at a tactical level (where the detail is much higher, but only a small part of the map is shown).

On the tactical map, it is possible to scroll, but the motion is rather jerky. There are several options in the strategic display allowing you to display different combinations of units and objectives. The game can be played with all units visible or with hidden movement, where only enemy units in contact with your forces are displayed.

The basic structure of Chickamauga is similar to other computer games. In each turn, you must give fresh orders to all of your units. Each turn represents two hours of time. Each order takes up a set amount of time from 10 minutes up to 50 minutes, depending on unit formation and terrain. At the beginning of a two hour turn, each unit is given up to two hours of time remaining. As you give movement and fire orders, the time remaining decreases. It is important to coordinate the movement and attack orders of your units and the wait command is provided to facilitate this. It is also possible to recover fatigue and casualties by resting.

After orders are given for all of the units, the turn is resolved. This is done in a two stage process. First, the computer calculates the turn resolution. Then a summary of the action is displayed on the strategic map.

Orders may be entered either by using keys or a joystick. I found both methods difficult to use. It was hard to pick up the diagonal movement using the joystick. On the keyboard, a rosette of keys control the cursor movement. Even after some practice, I found that I had to carefully choose the keys I pressed or the cursor and units would go in the wrong direction. Fortunately, it was easy to cancel mistakes, but I feel that the whole process could be better done.

A weaker point of the game is the need to give orders to every unit every turn. There are a lot of units and this becomes quite tedious after a while. Given the necessity of coordinating attacks to the exact minute, the order giving process is overly complicated and a burden on the player. Also I feel that the two hour turn is too long. Near the end of the turn, I tended to lose control of what was happening. Although it could be argued that this is accurate in a Civil War battle, it does not add enjoyment to the game.

During the turn resolution, the units are displayed on the strategic map as blue or grey rectangular pixels which seem to crawl over the map. Combat is indicated by different buzzes and tones not at all like gunfire. I found it very hard to reconcile the orders I gave with what I saw on the screen. I would have preferred to see the turn resolution on the tactical map.

The fundamental problem in this game is its design. You are put in the position of army commander, but you must also be intimately involved with the formation and movement of every brigade level unit in your army during every time interval. You don't have subordinates except as an additional complication.

The game is fundamentally a boardgame transplanted to a computer.

The computer is used to handle hidden, simultaneous movement and bookkeeping complications that would be impossible to handle in a boardgame. But however well this is done, and it should be noted that it is well done, it ignores the fact that in a boardgame, the act of moving a unit is done quickly with one motion of the hand. in this game, it is necessary to individually figure out every motion of each unit through the hexgrid, paying attention to formation and firing as you go. This results in orders taking overly long to enter making it hard to keep the game flowing. There is nothing spectacularly wrong with the game, and I encountered no mistakes in implementation. At the same time, it is tedious and not much fun to play.

More War Game Reviews

Back to Table of Contents -- Game News #6
To Game News List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com